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Top 5 articles regarding robots in 2010

By Rob Aid

3 January 2011

The main subject of our website is related to robots. After robots conquered the industrial applications, they are being developed to aid humans in their daily habits. The robots that are currently available for usage at home are either too clunky, or too expensive. Luckily, there are some cleaning robots that are affordable and useful, and we believe that the time of robotic aid is going to become more widely spread.

The makers of the Actroid robot developed a similarly applied, yet less spooky robot. Kokoro Co. Ltd.’s I-FAIRY robot was unveiled at CES 2010 in Las. The “i” in its name stands for intelligent-information-icon, and as its name suggests, it’s an information robot based on the image of a fairy. The robot detects when people are standing nearby and automatically begins reciting its lines, so it is being positioned as a guide or receptionist robot for museums.

It sits on a pedestal at a height of 130cm (4′3″) and width of 90cm (3″). The I-FAIRY’s body can rotate left or right, its head can move right or left and up or down, its shoulders can move back and fourth and its elbows can rotate left or right – making a total of 9 degrees of freedom. The robot also conducted a wedding ceremony in Tokyo.

A research group, consisting of people from International Rescue System Institute, Chiba Institute of Technology and Tohoku University, has developed a rescue robot named QUINCE. It will be used to collect rescue information in case of Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRNE) disasters, including hazardous substance leaks in the underground malls or tall buildings, and chemical agents terrorist attacks.

In a time of disaster, newly developed QUINCE runs at high speed through hazardous underground malls to help specify locations of potential victims, inspect a situation and provide information by remote control.

Created by Hiroshi Ishiguro, a professor at Osaka University who is famous for creating a robot replica of himself (Geminoid HI-1), the new gynoid robot named Geminoid F (“F” stands for female) is designed to be remote controlled by an operator. It is a copy of an actual woman in her 20s with the ability to exhibit diverse facial expressions more naturally than Ishiguro’s previous human-like robots.

Whereas the Geminoid HI-1 has up to 46 actuators, the new Geminoid F has only 12. Furthermore, the HI-1 robot requires a large external box filled with compressors and valves, while the Geminoid F has embedded air servo valves and an air servo control system into its body.

Unlike most of the robots we wrote about, which are made by corporations or research laboratories, this robot was built by one man. Loki, which takes its name from the Norse god of Mischief, is a robot build for hobby. It was made by software engineer David Shinsel, who claims the robot was originally intended to be just remotely controlled, but he got a little carried away.

The robot is able to move around by using its wheels while the indoor pathfinding algorithm. Loki has two arms with 3 finger hands which are capable to grasp objects. It is able to interact via remote control and logistics over Wi-Fi, vision processing, speech recognition, and basic artificial intelligence (AI). Its AI allows it to operate in two modes: “command mode” (where its responses are fairly constrained), and the “conversation mode” (where you never know what he will say or do).

After two years of developing, and a lot of technology taken from previous iterations of Mahru robots, the scientists from Korea Institute of Science and Technology came up with Mahru-Z. It’s a walking robot maid which can clean a home, dump clothes in a washing machine or heat food in a microwave. The robot resembles the looks of the robot maid Rosie from the animated show “The Jetsons”.

It has a human-like body with a rotating head, arms and legs, and it is capable of “seeing” 3D objects and recognizing jobs that need to be done. Although there are some similar robots, its developers claim that Mahru-Z has the most advanced domestic robot ability to mimic the human movement. Aside from household chores, Mahru-Z can also be used in conditions which are too difficult or dangerous for humans.